6 Tips for Nailing Your Product Plan Roadmap

Technology changes so rapidly today. Companies have to move faster: to innovate and to get products to market quicker. A good product plan roadmap can take the chaos and turn it into a future-facing, go-to-market product.

#1: Create a visual roadmap.

Don’t just tell your team members, executives, and stakeholders about your plans. Show them your vision for the new product with a visual product roadmap. You can present a clear, concise representation that people understand at a glance. One suggestion is to ditch the Excel and PowerPoint presentations and find a robust roadmapping software platform to create your visual roadmap.

#2: Tailor roadmaps to your audience.

Your product roadmap means different things to different audiences. For example, your marketing department may want to know about its features so they can design campaigns. Your sales department wants to the date it will be ready so they can pre-sell. And your executives want to know overall progress and budget to date.

Tailor your roadmaps to your audience. With roadmapping software, you have one central dashboard, but can choose what fields you want to show on individual roadmaps shared with different stakeholders.

#3: Collaborate and share.

The best roadmaps are groups of stakeholders ment teams working together. A shared roadmap shows your stakeholders and team that you value their input and their awareness of progress is a crucial part of your product’s success. Use your product plan roadmap as a way to engage with customers and communicate priorities.

You may be pleasantly surprised that when you’re open and honest about your priorities, customers are more forgiving.

#4: Remain flexible.

You can write “Work in progress” or “subject to change” on your product plan roadmap. This will help signify that you’re flexible with your deliverables and timeline in case changes crop up. However, you need a single product owner with authority to add or change items. This should let you react well to bumps in the road and roadblocks, and make changes on the fly to keep your product on target.

#5: Visit your roadmap daily.

Your roadmap shows your team and stakeholders a present-day snapshot of your product’s status. When you visit it daily to keep it current, your team and stakeholders will rely on it for progress updates and reasons for delays. You’ll find they’re more accepting when they have a daily progress roadmap that captures market changes, new planning priorities, added resources, or even a new direction.

#6: Use your roadmap for granular and high-level management.

Use your roadmap to keep track of the granular level tasks such as what’s being worked on that day and progress towards the next release. Then track your big picture items like maintaining alignment with company quarterly goals. Your product plan roadmap lets you control product management and gives you the perspectives you need to master minutiae and the big picture.

Final thoughts

The best way to nail your product plan roadmap is to use a roadmapping software platform that lets you capture all your inputs easily and simply to generate stunning visual roadmaps. The right tool makes the process easy for anyone and actually fun to create. Not only will you save time, but your product plan roadmap will be more comprehensive, easily shared for collaboration, and allows you to track everything from tasks to budget from a single dashboard.